Daily Recap — August 30

“The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue.”

— Napolean Bonaparte

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NO RAISE FOR YOU!

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Want to send ripples through the Swamp? This is how it’s done.

PDT announced today that he would cancel a scheduled 2.1% across-the-board pay increase for federal workers, as well as locality pay increases.

“In light of our Nation’s fiscal situation, Federal employee pay must be performance-based, and aligned strategically toward recruiting, retaining, and rewarding high-performing Federal employees and those with critical skill sets,” PDT wrote in a letter to both chambers of Congress.

The proposed move would affect most of the 2.1 million federal employees around the nation, about 1.7 million of which live in areas outside of the Washington, D.C., which has become the wealthiest area in the nation. When the richest part of the country is the part that doesn’t produce anything, that tells you all you need to know. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Swamp.

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The good news is that the one type of government worker who actually provides value in exchange for their paycheck, the military member, is scheduled to receive a 2.6% increase, which the Trump administration aims to leave alone.

Last year, the Trump administration approved a 1.4% increase in federal pay and a 2.4% increase in military pay.

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In the letter, PDT cited his authority to propose an alternative pay schedule based on Title V of the U.S. Code, which allows the president to alter scheduled pay changes he deems inappropriate in light of “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare.”

This isn’t a new fight for Trump by any means. His 2019 budget proposal sought to freeze federal pay, but the Senate Appropriations Committee went about their way as if he’d said nothing at all and included a 1.9% pay bump in its spending plans anyway. The House version of the bill did not include such an increase and sought reductions to spending on federal pension plans.

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DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP:

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The Donald’s proposal sets up a yuuuuuge fight with Congress, which could effectively overturn the action in upcoming spending legislation.

Both chambers are scheduled to meet in the coming weeks to work out the differences between their respective bills, negotiations which could effectively override the administration’s effort to cut pay. PDT has not indicated if he would veto such a measure if it included a pay increase.

Dims and their RINO brethren wasted no time blasting the move, of course. Their antennae are hardly moved by the news of Americans being murdered in cold blood by people who have no business being here at all, but threaten to rein in bloated government and they come together to fight like no other.

“For someone who claims to be a leadership maven, President Trump certainly gives the impression through his actions that he has no idea how to run an effective organization,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who can barely run his own press conferences, much less an international company.

“Cutting federal pay is not the way to run the best government possible or to recruit and retain the most talented Americans to serve their fellow countrymen,” he added.

If there’s anything that will get us through this fiscal mess, it’s lectures from the very people who got us into this mess. Rep. Hoyer knows all the answers; he’s just now getting around to telling us.

One of the slimiest members of the House, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) wasted no time joining the Twitter pile-on, saying PDT “screwed” federal employees.

“To the hard-working federal employees Trump just screwed by cutting pay — the folks who run our parks, protect our communities, & serve our veterans: YOU MATTER. If billionaires can get tax cuts, you should get a [cost of living adjustment]. You work hard for America & that should add up to something,” he wrote.

Actually it adds up to quite a lot. It adds up to benefits and a pension that much of the private sector can’t even compete with, and for a fraction of the work. Yes, I’m saying that the private sector generally works harder than the public sector. That tends to happen when it’s nearly impossible to get fired. I understand that there are decent people working for government, but anyone who thinks government workers are more efficient/productive on average than private sector workers likely doesn’t have much experience dealing with either.

And that brings us to our very own Barbara Comstock (R-VA), whose Virginian constituency is largely comprised of many of the federal employees who would be affected.

Comstock said she was strongly opposed to the move, arguing that GOP support for federal workers should extend beyond ICE and homeland security officials.

“Dedicated work is also done by our civilian employees at other national security agencies, the FBI, DEA and other law enforcement agencies, as well as the National Institute of Health where dedicated federal employees search for cures to diseases that drive up the costs of health care everyday,” she said.

“We cannot balance the budget on the backs of our federal employees and I will work with my House and Senate colleagues to keep the pay increase in our appropriations measures that we vote on in September,” she added.

You’re right, Ma’am, we can’t balance the budget on the backs of federal employees. It’s simply too massive. But it sure is a damn fine start!

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BIG PICTURE:

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I’m not gonna pump sunshine here. This proposal likely isn’t going anywhere, and it’s very unlikely that PDT will use his veto pen if the pay increases remain. If he’s not going willing to go to the mat for #TheWall due to a fear of upsetting the midterms, he certainly isn’t going to do it for a scheduled pay hike.

That doesn’t mean it’s not good politics, though. Saving pay hikes for an already bloated government may seem like a noble pursuit to those inside the Beltway, it doesn’t play that well to John Q. Taxpayer. A majority of taxpayers, especially those on the right and in the middle, don’t have a great deal of sympathy for a government worker who could be forced to see their pay raises slow down for a bit.

Private sector workers wish they had the luxury of congressmen voting on their pay hikes rather than the market determining their worth. And just imagine being a member of Congress and getting to vote for your own pay hike. Now that should be illegal.

This is a good way for PDT to further contrast himself and his supporters from the deep state bureaucracy which seeks to serve itself on the backs of taxpayers. This isn’t altogether different from the contrast that was drawn by holding a Trump rally on the same night as the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Same idea.

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PROPERTY OF WEINSTEIN, INC.

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New York governor Andrew Cuomo isn’t much of a fan of America, as evidenced by his comments on our lack of historical greatness. I’ll tell you what he does fancy, though: checks from #HornyHarvey.

A prominent law firm that formerly represented creepy Harvey Weinstein handed over a $25,000 check to Cuomo‘s campaign just six days before the governor called off a probe into the handling of sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein, public records show.

If you’ll recall, former New York Attorney General and #MeToo spokesman Eric Schneiderman, who was recently run out of office for his own creepy and abusive behavior, conveniently found it in his own heart to avoid investigating Weinstein’s behavior, despite a mountain of evidence that included audio tapes. But he’s not the only one. In this case, it was District Attorney Cyrus Vance who was under investigation for canning the Weinstein probe for less than honest reasons.

So for those keeping score at home, the AG was being investigated for being corrupt in ending the original Weinstein probe. Then, the probe into the probe was also canned, because the only person more corrupt than the AG is the governor.

I can’t make this stuff up.

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The hefty contribution was made through hoity toity Manhattan firm Boies Schiller & Flexner on June 20, according to records on the state Board of Elections website.

Less than a week later, Cuomo called for a six-month halt of AG Barbara Underwood’s investigation into DA Vance’s decision not to prosecute Weinstein for a 2015 groping incident. The temporary suspension was ordered to avoid interfering with Weinstein’s ongoing criminal case.

Weinstein was at that time represented by David Boies.

In true Clintonian style, Boies’ firm had hired and paid private investigative companies to dig up dirt on Weinstein accusers — while at the same time representing the Failing New York Times, which also published a report on the Weinstein allegations. Conflict of interest, anyone?

A spokesperson for Boiles Schiller & Flexner — which also made a $25,000 contribution to Cuomo’s re-election campaign in 2017 — said the donations were just fine and dandy.

“Neither Mr. Boies, nor anyone from his firm, ever discussed Harvey Weinstein or Mr. Vance with Mr. Cuomo, or anyone from his office, at any time,” the spokesperson said. “Mr. Boies is a longtime supporter of Mr. Cuomo and his contribution in June was consistent with his contributions to Mr. Cuomo over years past.”

It was recently revealed that Boies gave over $55,000 in campaign contributions to Vance — including a #BigFat $10,000 check after he opted not to charge Weinstein.

The Cuomo camp explains his stand-down order this way:

“The attorney general’s investigation was suspended to avoid situations in which Weinstein’s defense attorneys would be able to constantly petition the attorney general’s office for information about what they uncovered and undermine a criminal prosecution.”

Yeah, that’s what it was. They were trying to hide information from Horny Harvey’s lawyers.

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BIG PICTURE:

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Look, we all know that Horny Harvey kept Cuomo and virtually the entire New York justice system on the payroll in order to keep their bloodhounds off his trail.

I know it, you know it, hell, your housecat knows it.

Will it make a difference? Frankly, no. Horney Harvery cut these checks fairly routinely, so they’ll never be able to prove that he specifically paid to make all this stuff go away. You know the old saying; it’s not what you know, but what you can prove.

Maybe it will give Cuomo’s moonbat gubernatorial opposition a shot in the arm, though. It’s a chick from Sex and the City. She’s a rabid resister. Just the face we need at the forefront of the Dim party.

Go, Cynthia, Go!

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M(OHR) CONNECTIONS EXPOSED

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And this one could potentially lead to much more.

Our good buddy Bruce Ohr is turning out to have been quite the go-between. Thanks to a brand new Fox News exclusive report, we now know that he had regular contact in 2016 with one Andrew Weissmann, the notoriously unethical “bulldog prosecutor” who attended Hillary’s election night victory party (lol) and is now King Bob Mueller’s top deputy.

The report claims that Ohr also kept “other senior FBI officials” apprised of everything related to the pee-pee dossier and the people behind it, citing “two sources close to the matter.”

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Taken directly from the Fox report:

The sources said Ohr’s outreach about the dossier – as well as its author, ex-British spy Christopher Steele; the opposition research firm behind it, Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS; and his wife Nellie Ohr’s work for Fusion – occurred before and after the FBI fired Steele as a source over his media contacts. Ohr’s network of contacts on the dossier included: former FBI agent Peter Strzok; former FBI lawyer Lisa Page; former deputy director Andrew McCabe; Weissmann and at least one other DOJ official; and a current FBI agent who worked with Strzok on the Russia case.

That sounds an awful lot like a group of folks who might have discussed “insurance policies” in “Andy’s office” leading up the election. In fact, it seems that that this crowd (and others) were very much tracking what was going on within the bureau during that time, which is pretty astonishing considering how hard it’s been for Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan and co. to extract even the smallest bits of info from the DOJ regarding that timeframe.

It’s important to note that Weismann isn’t being reported as having been briefed once as a one-off or having spoken to Ohr in passing regarding the dossier. Rather, he was reportedly kept “in the loop” by Ohr. One doesn’t need an Ivy League education to know what that means. This was an ongoing information-sharing relationship. One doesn’t have ongoing informational relationships with someone else unless said person is involved with ongoing operations.

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Even more disturbing is the fact that people within the Trump orbit appeared to have been targeted for prosecution long before PDT even took office.

In the following excerpt from Fox’s report, they remind us of Ohr’s personal notes, which appear to reference Paul Manafort:

In addition, Ohr’s handwritten notes, reviewed by Fox News, showed that two weeks after the election, on Nov. 21, he made a list including Page, Strzok and the FBI agent – which may have been a reference to a meeting. “No [prosecution] yet. Push case ahead on M. May go back to Chris,” he wrote. Congressional investigators told Fox News they believe the “M” likely refers to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who recently was convicted on tax and bank fraud charges in Virginia, and the “Chris” is Christopher Steele.

That same month, Steele was fired by the FBI as a confidential source over his contact with the media about the dossier.

According to court records, an FBI memo also states that Weissmann met as early as April 2017 with a group of reporters about Manafort. The timing appears significant, coming one month before FBI Director James Comey was fired and Mueller was appointed to lead the special counsel team.

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BIG PICTURE:

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We need more information before conducting a true big picture analysis, but this latest revelation seems to support our general view of what happened on the FBI’s 7th floor in 2016.

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Christopher Steele was deep in the gravy of Trump’s inner circle while a group of NeverTrumpers back at the FBI and DOJ awaited patiently any bit of dirt he could provide. They watched so intently, in fact, that they’d decided which cases should be “pushed” and when.

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Are we to believe that Bob Mueller, who was and is thick as thieves with all the FBI and DOJ leadership, had no earthly clue what had been going on with the dossier and the arrangement that was being kept by Bruce and Nellie Ohr to act as a Russian disinformation pipeline for the bureau?

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We all know the answer to that. Mueller, Weismann, Comey, McCabe, Sally Yates and myriad other officials knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew it before the Mueller witch hunt was ever officially afoot.

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Does the “kept in loop” phrase sound familiar? If so, perhaps it’s because it follows a familiar pattern. If you’ll recall, Obama UN Ambassador Samantha Power was also “in the loop” regarding the dossier, except she didn’t bother to ask of its origins or how it was being relayed to the bureau. She likely knew, don’t get me wrong. But her version of being “in the loop” meant unmasking American citizens in SIGINT (signals intelligence, intercepted communications) reports on a near daily basis.

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Every day she went to work, she ordered the top-secret unmasking of Trump campaign volunteers so she could see what they’d been saying the day before. And she wasn’t the only one. We know Susan “Dirty” Rice was doing the same in her capacity as National Security Adviser; a post she was grossly unqualified to hold. Others were reportedly in on the unmasking action, but we’ll have to wait for PDT to fill us in on those details, as he’s one of the few people in government with the ability to find out anytime he chooses.

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So while we do need more information before truly completing the picture, a big part of it is in place. We know that the FBI, DOJ and, yes, the White House were all being kept in the loop of any and all possible dirt within the Trump campaign. And it was being done in the most corrupt and slimy ways imaginable. Undercover operatives infiltrated the campaign. Electronic surveillance was conducted on the phones and other devices of Trump campaign volunteers, and it was done using Russian disinformation as justification. I’m actually giving Steele the benefit of the doubt when I say he used Russian disinformation. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if that dossier came straight from Sid Blumenthal’s personal printing press.

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Now, it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks. Just how closely has the Mueller team been working with Christopher Steele and those with whom he’s associated?.

I have a feeling that the answers are in a much more secure location than a National Enquirer safe.

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1600 Pennsylvania Ave, maybe?

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